It’s known that Google has a good relationship with Firefox - hire Firefox developer to continue their work, pay people to promote Firefox(AdSense), blah blah… One thing I didn’t know that there’s list of versions of Firefox in Mozilla’s FTP under Partner->Google.
I am not sure what are the differences between the original-recipe Firefox and the Google-taste Firefox, and I am not going to install it now, but I will test somewhere else today

Tony Ruscoe has gone digging around in Google calendars and has turned up what appears to be some debugging info for Google employees, and Garett Rogers diggs through Tony’s post and notes that it takes 113 servers to run the Calendars application.

Techcrunch reports that Google may have narrowed down the online spreadsheet arena. Apparently a Hebrew blog is reporting that Google has hired the founders of iRows, an online, AJAX-powered spreadsheet program, and as part of the deal, iRows will be closed down.

Google just updated their page for third party Google sitemap generators, plugins, modules & code. These aren’t officially sanctioned Google products, but they can help you easily create a Google sitemap for your favorite CMS or blogging software, or create your own stand-alone sitemaps generator. Via the Google blog. Thanks to Maile Ohye for this.

But there’s one caveat- This only works with the Google search appliance (GSA). The new search operator is inmeta, which allows you to formulate more advanced searches on your intranet, based on the presence, absence or content of meta tags. Here’s the Spec: [Continue Reading >>]

Google just launched Enterprise search for Brazil in their quest to provide the service to as many people as possible.

From the official Google checkout blog:

With the holiday season quickly approaching, we wanted to do something to say “thank you” to our merchants. To help out during this very busy shopping season, we are processing all of our merchants’ Google Checkout sales for free during the holidays. From November 8 through December 31, 2006, Google Checkout merchants will receive free processing for all of their Checkout sales, regardless of whether or not they use AdWords. If you don’t currently use Checkout, don’t worry—new Checkout merchants are eligible for this offer as well, so sign up now. To all of our merchants: thank you for contributing to the success of Google Checkout and Happy Holidays!

Searchmash, Google’s testing ground for new search features has a new layout. There are now four collapsable sections for web results, images, Wikipedia articles and feedback.

On the other hand, it looks like you can no longer drag and drop to move the search results around.

I wonder what Google has up it’s sleeve.

I complained almost a month ago that Google Reader should allow me to drag and drop my feeds in the left pane to rearrange them and move them among categories/folders. Google has done something about it.

There is now an option to move a feed to a folder right after you add it. This not quite as good as what I wanted, but it’s better than nothing. Now all they need to do is add this functionality to all feeds, not just a new feed right after you add it. If I’m looking at a feed and reading it, that’s the perfect time to make a judgment call as to what folder(s) it should go in. Why can’t I have a tiny drop-down box at the top to add the current feed to a different folder and optionally remove it from current folders?

The Google reader team rolled this feature out over a week ago and I finally caught on- Thanks Google.

This is another Google tech talk by Mike Andrews, a specialist in software security. It’s almost an hour and a half long, but there’s some good tidbits in there.

Here’s the abstract.

It all started out as a place to share physics documents, but has grown into potentially mankind’s largest and most complex creation. The World Wide Web is a lot of things - a soapbox for everyone, a giant shopping mall, an application platform, and unfortunately a hacker’s playground.

As more applications get “web-ified” moving from the desktop or legacy systems onto the web, attackers follow the vulnerabilities. Without sophisticated tools or “1337 5×1llz”, web applications are now the most attacked technology, with the majority of attacks categorized as “easily exploitable”.

So, before your application is placed out into one of the most hostile environments, how do you stop your software from being “0wn3d” by the 14 year old in their blacked-out bedroom, or being used by a Russian crime cartel?

In this TechTalk, Mike Andrews will look at how web applications are attacked, walk through a testing framework for evaluating the security of an application and take some deep-dives into a few interesting and common vulnerabilities and how they can be exploited.

And here’s the video.

Google and JotSpot have announced an acquisition by Google. JotSpot makes a collaborative product similar to a wiki that allows groups of people to work together and share ideas. As with most new Google acquisitions, registration is closed for new customers, but there is a waiting list if you want to sign up. Also in Google form, JotSpot’s services are now free.

More about JotSpot’s product.

Haven’t used Google Checkout yet? Take a quick tour and see if you’re hooked.

Yesterday Google launched the the Custom Search Engine. With it you can create your very own search engine. You define what sites are searched, customize the look and feel to match your website, then put it on your site and make money with the ads. You can read more on the official Google blog.

Google tells its engineers to slow down and not crank out so many new products.

We’ve seen a flood of new Google products over the past year(s). Can anyone say Gmail, Picasa, Analytics, Earth, Maps, DesktopSearch, Talk, Video Player, as well as many new web-based services…. Need I continue?

While the techies out there know about or use most of this software, the majority of internet users are unaware of this wealth of free products. Google has decided to focus on spreading the word about the products that are currently out there and slow down the creation of new “beta” products, instead focusing on better functionality. Google admits their product line is “confusing” to the average user, so It’s a good stategy to consolidate and

Via the Clevelander via Digg.

Mihai Parparita has written a python script to import del.icio.us bookmarks into Google bookmarks. You can use it here, or check out the source code here.

UPDATE: I thought I should add that Mihai has several other Greasemonkey scripts that work with Gmail available here, including Gmail preview bubbles, Gmail saved searches and Gmail label colors.

With all the hype people are giving Google over Writely, Google spreadsheets, google calendar etc, people are forgetting about the other people who where there first. For example, Oddpost was there before Gmail with a really cool AJAX user interface in some ways nicer than Gmail, before getting bought by Yahoo!

I just want to draw attention to 37 signals and their great products. Go check them out. They’re not all free, but they’re really cool.

Google employee and blogger Mihai Parprita has created a greasemonkey script that runs in Firefox and will integrate Google Reader with Gmail. You can download it and give it a try.

If you want it spelled out:

• Install Greasemonkey
• Install the integration sript
• Restart Firefox
• Reload/Open Gmail

Did I go way overboard on the links in this post or what?

I just ran accross some more competition for Google’s online word processing and Spreadsheet applications. Zoho is a complete office suite offering free online word processor, a spreadsheet and a presentation applications. Zoho also offers some other interesting productivity tools and utilities.

I’ve been using Foxmarks for some time now. It’s a really handy Firefox extension that allows you to automatically keep bookmarks syncronized between two or more computers. I’ve just recently heard about Google browser sync. It has the same feature of syncronizing bookmarks, but will also allow you to keep other items such as history, saved passwords, persistent cookies (to keep you logged into sites) synchronized between computers. If you only use one computer, it’s handy to keep a backup of all this important data which can then be restored to your Firefox. Read more about it here.

There’s some speculation out there regarding a domain that was recently (Sept. 13th) transefered to Google. Might Google be planning to offer hosting services? Decide for yourself. GoogleHostedServices.com & DNS info on this domain.

Via Resource shelf.

It looks like Google just released a new game called the Google Image Labeler. To begin with, they should have picked a better name- “Google Image Labler” is like flat, warm Coke. Anyways, the game works like this: Google matches you up with a random partner and shows both of you the same thumbnails. Without communicating with the other person, if you both pick the same keyword to describe the image, you get points. This could have several uses, such as improving Image Search with these taged images, and feeding the data to an image recognition program to train it to recognize photos or video.

Now to the rip-off part. About a year ago I had found a neat little game called ESP Game, that is basically the same thing. It’s published by Carnegie Mellon University and includes a search interface where you can search for images based on the labels created by the game players. I don’t know if Google ripped this off, or if they licensed it from the original creators, but this time I have to say I prefer ESP Game over “Google Image Labler”

We’re still seeing this every once in a while. (But I still love Gmail)

and this…

Andy had reported on a new device developed by Callum Peden.

G-vision is a prototype of a device that will allow the user to compare a digital image of where they are with a Google database that, along with some GPS trickery should be able to tell them exactly where they are along with lots of other information available in the Google index that relates to that area.

Google Vision is a conceptual product developed by Callum Peden, for the worlds favorite search engine. The product provides the user with a truly unique information hub by combining GPS, OLED technology and advanced image recognition in the form of a retractable screen device.
As well as this, advanced image recognition will mean Google Vision can target well known landmarks. Then using the increased coverage of wireless internet, provide the user with information on their surroundings wherever they may be.

Remeber how Google bought Sketchup last month? They’ve now announced that they will be giving it away for personal use. So go ahead download it, and start modeling your world- a house, toolshed, cabin, who knows what else. I’m not sure what the practical uses are at the moment, but it sure looks like a lot of fun.

It has all sorts of 3D geometry and pre-made components so you don’t have to do the grunt work, and cool things like automatic, real-time shading shows you just how the sun will hit your project. If you want to see some samples of what people have modelled with this software, check out the Sketchup Warehouse- you can even upload your own model when you’re done. I’ve posted buildings but you can use this to model anything.

I know this post is somewhat a rambling confusion :), but I just wanted to add that in the 3D warehouse, you can download the model right to the Sketchup software or to Google earth and view the sattelite imagery for it. This is getting cooler and cooler.

Google bought Writely several weeks ago, in an attempt to challenge Microsoft’s domination of the Word processing market. Ajaxwrite a new Javascript powered online word processor brought to us by Ajaxlaunch, is now offering some pretty stiff competition. AjaxWrite is platform independant, the only requirement is a Firefox browser, and you can access, create and save Word documents from any computer. AjaxWrite doesn’t offer all the options that MS Word offers, but admittedly, Word has so many obscure functions, that instead of enhancing your productivity, it can hamper it. I personally hate the “personalized” menus. I’m way faster if I can always count on a menu option being in the exact same place. For that matter, I prefer keyboard commands. For me they are a lot faster. Anyways, to get back to the subject at hand, I tried out AjaxWrite and it worked pretty good for me. It had all the basic functionality that I need in a word processor, and I saved the document to my HHD without a hitch. Will I use it everyday? Probably not right now (OpenOffice is working fine for me), but if I’m ever on a box that doesn’t have a word processor, I can always fire up FireFox, and create my Word document. I give it a full thumbs up.

Danny Sullivan just published his top 25 list of rants about what Google is doing wrong. I have to agree with him on some points. I think he’s hit the nail on the head for the following points:

6. Google.com doesn’t show the same results regardless of country. You have country-specific editions. They allow people to choose if they want a country skew. Given this, don’t automatically skew if someone has chosen to search the entire Web. It’s confusing when people in different countries compare results.

I have to agree that it gets really annoying for those of us who travel alot to get sent to different “country-specific” Google sites that have different results. My advice, don’t automatically redirect the user based on IP/Geolocation information. Instead, give the user a link to the appropriate country-specific site, but if I go to www.google.com that’s where i want to go.

18. Gmail’s “custom from” is a problem. If you’re going to let me send things as if I have my own mail server, then ensure people believe I have my own mail server. Your “Custom From” problem is causing people to think they have to now send to both my “real” domain and my Gmail address. I have my own SMTP (define) server. I use yours because I want to archive my outgoing mail. But I can’t do this if you don’t fulfill the promise that I’d have my own domain in the sender field. Charge me if you have to, but fix it.

19. Gmail doesn’t display more than 100 items. After archiving 50,000 messages 100 items at a time, I really wished for the ability to view more than 100 items per page. I still want that when I’m having to review about 300 spam items per day. This can’t be that hard. Can’t we have it?

Now I really like Gmail, but there are a few areas where it can be improved. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again- I can’t empasize this enough- Before Gmail becomes a “real” email client, I need the ability to change my from address. Period. Until this happens I just can’t use gmail for business. Danny’s suggestion about displaying more than 100 emails per page makes a lot of sense especially these days with bandwidth getting cheaper and cheaper, just send it on over. And I will pay too- anything that’s going to automate the things I do and save me time and frustration, is worth the investment.

Anyways, if you want to read the rest of Danny’s rants, be my guest.

Remember that Google bought Writely about a month ago? Well, in an article just published today in the International Herald Tribune, John Markoff of the New York Times mentiones that Google chief executive, Eric Schmidt, stated that

“Google did not buy the program [Writely] to compete against Microsoft Word. Rather, he said, it viewed Writely as a key component in hundreds of products it is now developing.”

So there you have it, Google’s not going to stop with the dozens of products/services they currently have, they are shooting for the stars.

Google apparently has real plans to blanket the United States with free wireless internet access, along with (guess what) free advertising to boot. No I’m not saying they will give you free advertising, you’ll get to see their advertising for free! How do you like that? I’d probably be cool with it in exchange for free nationwide wireless coverage.

Here are some excerpts from Cnn:

The search-engine giant has developed three technologies for offering wireless Internet access, and advertising, free of charge.

More evidence has emerged that Google is getting ready to blanket the U.S. with free Wi-Fi

[Google] has filed for three patents related to offering wireless Internet access. Search Engine Roundtable points out that the patents all have to do with serving up advertising through a wireless Internet connection maintained by a third party, whose brand Google would include in the presentation of those ads.

Read more about it on cnn’s site.

Sketchup is a 3D drawing/designing/viewing program developed by @ Last Software which has just been acquired by Google. Sketchup has written a rather long blog entry about the buyout, as has Google. Read some more about Sketchup or download their software and give it a try.

You’ve been fascinated with Google earth and Google maps, now check out… ta ta ta.. Google mars. You can take your own private trip to mars, explore the terrain, and get an up-close view. The interface is similar to Google maps, and allows you to see a color-coded topo map, a visible-imagery map (what you actually see), and an infrared map that helps you see what you couldn’t see with the naked eye. And all this was released on Percival Lowell’s birthday.

A relatively new web application, Writely, created by the California upstart “Upstartle” has been bought by Google. Writely allows you to create, edit, share and store your documents on the web and have them accessible whenever and wherever you want- and it does it all within your browser. Links Writely - Writely’s blog post - Google’s blog post.

I found it rather interesting that Google would be advertising one of it’s products on the new Yahoo Publisher’s Network (YPN). The YPN is a direct competitor to Google’s own Adsense advertising network. As you can see in the screenshot, Google is advertising it’s free photo browsing/editing software Picasa, which it aqcuired in 2004.

Several news sources have reported that the Gdrive is really going to happen. Note that this is not a hack to use your Gmail account as a harddrive, which has been available for some time. This would be a real network share, or universally accesible harddrive. Data Docket (apparently with some connection to Google) has registered the domainname gdrive.com
Hacks to use Gmail as a storage device here and here.
Read more: here, here & here.

The Google search appliance (gsa) and the Google mini are hardware/software solutions to add search capabilities to your intranet or LAN.




Read more about them here.

If you havn’t already heard, you can now get Gmail accounts for your website. This makes it possible to use the Gmail interface to manage your mail, but still have a more professional appearance such as having your email come from you@yourdomain.com. Gmail for domains. Remember this is not open to everyone. It’s a limited beta test that you must apply for.

This is pure speculation on the Search Engine Journal’s part, but they seem to see evidence that Google may be planning to launce a Finance service. SEJ apparently has received referrals from google.com/finance for exampe: http://google.com/finance?q=goog&btng=search+finance. Read on.

Now you can edit web pages at Google and Google will even host the pages for you. You must have a Gmail account to use this feature. The hosted pages will be at yourGmailUsername.googlepages.com

Main features:

• No technical knowledge required. Build high-quality web pages without having to learn HTML or use complex software.
• What you see is what you’ll get. Edit your pages right in your browser, seeing exactly how your finished product will look every step along the way.
• Don’t worry about hosting. Your web pages will live on your own site at http://yourgmailusername.googlepages.com

As a side note, we may have to wait a few days to try it out:

Due to heavy demand, we are unable to offer new accounts for today. If you’d like to be added to our waiting list, please enter your email address.

If you have more questions, see the FAQ page for the Google Page Creator.

If you’re a developer, this will interest you. Google’s Libjingle, which can be found on Sourceforge.

Google’s Libjingle (http://code.google.com/apis/talk/index.html) is Google Talk’s implementation of Jingle and Jingle-Audio (proposed extensions to XMPP) to interoperate with Google Talk’s peer-to-peer and voice calling capabilities.

This story is via Wired mag, where Rogers Cadenhead dissects Google maps and where it centers. If you log onto Google maps, and just zoom in, you will find a farm just outside of Coffeyville, Kansas

How’s that for easy? Read more at wired.com. Google Earth is centered on Lawrence, KS, not far from Coffeeville.

Maggie Dew reached the center of the map and brought back photos. “I was covered with little burrs and stick-tites,” she said.

Google Desktop 3 has serious security flaws reports PCPro.

Research firm Gartner is the latest company to warn organisations of the security risk presented by Google’s Desktop 3. In a report, Gartner concludes that the danger of company confidential data being intercepted outside the corporation’s firewall represented an ‘unacceptable risk’.

Read more here.

Zdnet has just revealed that Google has a special program for “trusted testers” who are friends or relatives of Google employees and get to beta test new software before it is released to the public. You can read more on the ZDnet Google blog and Google’s trusted tester FAQ.

The system will have a three-dimensional display that depicts surrounding topography such as buildings and street widths, Volkswagen said in a prepared statement. The company did not say when it will be available.

Read more here.

Google has just posted in their blog that they have aquired MeasureMap, unique blog statistics/analytics software, from Adaptive Path. There’s no mention of what they paid, but Jeffery Veen of MeasureMap wrote the post, so it looks like he was part of the purchase. Looks like this product will go well with GoogleAnalytics (formerly Urchin). You can also read about this on Adaptive Path’s site.

Today’s Google gossip comes from the Valleywag blog. According to them, Google will be rolling out free wifi internet access in all major US cities. There are already plans to do it in Google’s hometown of MountainView CA, but as reported by business 2 last year, they are still planning to aim at all major US cities. Apparently San Fransisco will be next.

What’s next on the list is Google’s new AJAX webpage editor. Codenamed trogdor (what could that possibly mean??), this app will apparently let you edit your webpages on the net, but with a cool (Gmail-esque maybe?) Javascript interface.

On January 24th and 25th a lot of controversy broke out concerning Google’s descision to censor their search results for the Chinese market. I’ve read *tons* of stuff about this now, and here I’ll just give you some links to some of the best resources to make your own decision on this issue. I feel kind of embarrased with Google’s decision, I just hope that they secretly have a plan up their sleeve to turn the tables on the Chinese government and give the Chinese people the real story about their government.

Background on internet censorship in China

Here are some of the words/concepts that are currently blocked by Chinese gov’t:

• democracy
• human rights
• dictatorship
• anti-communist
• communist bandits
• selling out one’s country
• massacre
• genocide
• oppression

But interestingly enough, some other words that you’d think *would* be blocked, aren’t:

• freedom
• reform
• elections
• fascism
• counterrevolutionary
• treason
• traitor
• overthrow
• coup

This blocking apparently only applies to mainland China- Hong Kong is not subject to mainland China’s laws. In addition to these blocked keywords, China also blocks certain websites such as BBC, Wikepedia, and some well-known proxy servers (used to circumvent blocking). Apparently keyword/website blocking is rather haphazard and if you try hard enough, you can get the information you want even if you’re in mainland China.

• List of words censored by the communist Chinese government (Wikipedia)
• Internet censorship in mainland China
• Wikipedia on internet censorship in China

Now, the issue with Google’s www.google.cn search portal

• Google announces their new Chinese search site www.google.cn, complete with censorship
• Compare Google results- censored and uncensored

Some of the controversy/opinions surrounding this issue

• Much controversy has arisen
• Google founder Sergey Brin defends the decision to block certain search results on their Chinese site
• Bloggers are upset with Google’s new Chinese site
• Thomas Hazlett talks about this paradox that Google has gotten itself into

What should Google do at this point?

• What one person thinks should be done- An open letter to Google Jan 25, 2006

EDIT: Here’s Google’s official write-up about the decision to go ahead with the Chinese site. Google in China.

Google has recently released Google reader, their new online RSS reader. You can subscribe to RSS feeds and read the newest news/posts in your favorite blogs all through the reader. If you want to read up on more news about this product, try the Google reader blog and the Google reader group.